Ned--
 
Check out 18th-19th century builders guides--Neve's "City and Country
Purchasers Guide"  comes to mind off hand. We used this to establish a
predictive model for architectural materials for an 18th century structure
--including types and quantities of nails.
 
Mike Rodeffer
 
At 02:48 PM 9/27/97 -0500, you wrote:
>Back 35 years ago (that long, really!) Fontana published an interesting
>study of the nails from Johnny Ward's Ranch (Fontana and Greenleaf 1962).
>This subject was expanded in an article that appeared in one of the two
>Conference on Historic Site Archeology proceedings that were published as
>issues of Florida Anthropologist.
>
>Since then, has anyone attempted to quantify nail usage on historic sites?
>As I recall, Fontana showed a house plan to several carpenters and asked
>them to specify the nails. He compared these numbers with the nails from
>the Ward Ranch site.
>
>In trying to interpret the Bloomsbury Site in Delaware, we have quantified
>the nails in hopes of interpreting architectural details, but the only
>similar tabulation we can find is Fontana's!
>
>Has anyone done a similar tabulation during the years since?
>
>Ned Heite
>
>